Crash, Bang

Warning, warning. That does not compute!

I thought immediately of Robot in Lost in Space. Having plunked for Plan B on my sets, I was smacked in the face by combinatoriality. Combinatorial tone rows are those that can form a 12-tone aggregate with the last half of one of its transpositions. In serial music that opens up some possibilities, but in set-based composition that does just the opposite. It means that the dominant set has the same intervallic makeup as the tonic, providing no progression.

When I shifted my set to begin on F#, that is what happened. O0 and O6 were combinatorial. I've tried to compose with combinatorial sets before, and all you get are grey harmonies and static progressions.

So I'm back to plan A.

O0:
I: C D Eb E F# G
V: Db F Ab A Bb B

The biggest overlap between I and another set is 4.
O1:
V/V: C Eb E F F# A
V/II: Bb C Db D E F

That makes my sub/pre-dominant function. That isn't the final classification. I usually give two classifications based on which side of the grid the set appears. X or V/X.

I haven't gone that far yet because I am considering overlap or pivot pitches. As I stated yesterday, I'm concerned about how chromatic the sets are, so the answer may be to add the first note (or two) of the second half of the row to expand the set. This has the possibility of dampening the progression, so it has to be used sparingly. The other option is to resort to 5 and 7 note sets. Here, it probably isn't practical, since it doesn't add much flavour to the I set. It just adds another whole step (A), and making it a 5 note set just drops the G, another semitone.

Pivot pitches are probably the way to go.

Next, I'll finish the classification and decide on pivot pitches.